Explain Dates to Anyone with Forecasts Based on Your Historical Data

Create Useful Forecasts Based on Actual Data

Once teams know their cycle and lead time, they can create reasonable forecasts. Even if they have wildly varying cycle time.

Many teams try to use story points as the basis of a forecast. Story points seduce teams into thinking that if the team can assess the relative complexity of a story, the team can estimate or forecast when they can complete the work.

We’ve seen use story points successfully to forecast under these circumstances:

When the team splits the story into a size of “one.”

When the team only works on one product at a time, so the team doesn’t confuse themselves with a context-switch.

When the team manages its overall WIP.

You might be surprised by that size of “one.” Johanna has seen teams succeed when their size of one is roughly a one-day story. Michael has seen teams succeed even if their “one” is a week.

When teams use a relatively even size of “one,” the teams use story points as an equivalent of their cycle time.

Story points are a measure of capacity, not duration. If you want to forecast, you need to understand durations, especially if you have delays in your work.

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